


Switchblade

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Series: an unquiet mind [9]
Category: From Paris with Love (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Bookworm Reece, But Wax is a bookworm too in that he's an encyclopedia of knowledge about monsters so..., Caring Wax, Friendship, Gen, Haunting, Horror, Horror Classics, Hunter Wax, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt Reece, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Literary Characters Come to Life, Minor Violence, Prophetic Visions, Reece is sooo out of his depth here, Serious Injuries, Trope Bingo Round 12, h/c_bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-28 07:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19389694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: There were also long periods where his head was buried in various books from his Horror Lit class. Reece was fixated on the macabre creatures haunting these works, the strange, the misunderstood, the hellish monsters that stalked, studied and ravaged humans. It had nothing to do with escaping from his own hellscape.And then a senior who had never so much as spared him a glance pulled out a knife and started tearing down Reece’s innocence, thread by thread.In which Reece is a studious bookworm and Wax is a bad-ass monster hunter and yet, they’re only high-schoolers.





	Switchblade

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill on my Trope Bingo [card](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/30129.html) for AU: High School/College and a fill on my h/c_bingo [card](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/34933.html) for the square Haunted. 
> 
> **Series:** An Unquiet Mind
> 
> While being placed in the above series due to it being a Monsters & Hunters AU of the film, this fic is a High School AU version of when Reece and Wax first meet.

Reece was so deep in Leroux’s exotically constructed torture chamber that to be torn out of it might have been the equivalent of opening up a vein or two.

_Too many vampire novels,_ the thought drifted through his head before being puffed away into oblivion. 

As it was, the alarm on Reece’s watch abruptly pulled him out of the O.G.’s world. He reluctantly closed the small though tired paperback, slung his backpack over his shoulder after checking quickly for his algebra book, and headed off quickly to class. He tried to keep his head in the here and now and not trapped in the past or in books written a century or two prior.

While Reece’s mornings, afternoons and evenings were consumed by historical events, equations and the periodic table’s numerous elements, there were also long periods where his head was buried in various books from his Horror Lit class, works by Shelley, Poe, Leroux, Stevenson and numerous others. These were the periods in which Reece  _thrived_ , lost in half-historical, half fictional worlds; peering into the souls of fictional characters; never losing himself so much as to be rid of the mantra that these things weren’t real, that the darkness was only an absence of light and nothing further. 

Reece was fixated on the macabre creatures haunting these works, the strange, the misunderstood, the hellish monsters that stalked, studied and ravaged humans. It had nothing to do with his… hallucinations, nothing to do with sleepless nights and black as pitch, cavernous shadows preying on the startling loss of time, the uncertainties and fears playing on his mind. It had nothing to do with escaping from his own hellscape, one where images of blood and gore and substances that had no name nor bearing in reality choked him of all security and of all reason.

In his head, in-between crippling headaches and overpowering waves of nausea, people  _died,_ they screamed and they bled and they shrank back in terrors Reece couldn’t fathom and they ran, they ran even though there was no end, no place to hide, no way to survive. 

An overactive imagination, nothing more.

And yet Reece was no writer, didn’t feel like he had the capacity to conjure up  _any_ part of the numerous things he’d seen, and it didn’t explain the insomnia or the migraines either. 

So Reece read, he fed his mind but not these… hallucinations, because whenever he stopped reading for days or  _weeks_ at a time  _they_ didn’t stop, and other than homework and essays and studying for exams, reading was the only distraction he had, class discussions the only way to walk through the darkness unscathed. 

And maybe, someday, these books, these  _words_ would be weapons that he could yield against his own shadows and against his own demons. 

But, for now, he ran through the rest of the day’s classes and hurried off to his fourth. The courtyard was mostly empty, odd that he hadn’t noticed and even odder given that lunchtime was just barely over, but Reece didn’t give it more than a passing thought as he rounded the corner that would lead him fastest into the science wing.

Or, at least,  _tried to._

Something grabbed hold of his backpack and pulled, sending Reece sprawling backward several feet until somehow his chest slammed down onto concrete, cruelly knocking the breath out of him. His glasses had been ripped from his face at some point and he cursed, stretching out his arms on instinct to feel around for them. He probably looked like the biggest idiot, splayed out on the ground, half-blind and fumbling, but Reece was a practical guy. He couldn’t realistically do anything if he couldn’t see, so that was his first course of action. Because of that, he ignored whoever had knocked him down, figuring it was one of the assholes that usually drove him out of the cafeteria, mocking him all the way out, sometimes the same guys that would turn around on a dime and ask him for test tip offs or assigned essays.

And maybe it was the wrong move, given he had gotten no closer to finding his glasses before a hand that felt as cold as ice itself wrapped around his ankle and pulled again, harder this time, nearly dragging him into the bushes save that Reece regained his senses and kicked out wildly with his free foot. He didn’t think he had landed a blow, save for his leg being freed just a moment before his head was the last part of him to enter the looming, overgrown mass of bushes behind him.

Reece panted, disoriented and confused. He rested face down on the ground for a moment, head raucously spinning and heart hammering in his ears, before trying to stand.

_Big_ mistake. 

His right leg immediately went out from under him, pain radiating out from his foot. Upon a gentle touch that foot felt like ice, but how could a hand do that to a foot?

Reece didn’t want to think about it. He stood again, careful not to place much weight on his injured foot, and limped off to the nurse, purposely not looking behind him into the bushes.

Reading on to find out what happened next and turning around to discover the cause of something were two  _very_ different things.

* * *

Reece shifted on the small cot. He knew the occupant on the cot next to his without a beat, the one staring at him with intense interest, lollipop moving savagely around his mouth, but Reece didn’t know much about him other than his name and that he was a senior, which explained it all really. Reece, as a freshman, had never spoken more than three words to a senior and that was either ‘excuse me’ or ‘sorry’ or ‘won’t happen again.’

This particular senior, however, Reece had never said even  _one_ word to. Most of the senior class hadn’t either, only a very close knit group of them ever even  _approached_ him. He was one of the seniors you steered clear of, that you didn’t even  _attempt_ to understand. He was dangerous and probably did unspeakable things when school was officially out and absolutely the  _last_ person Reece wanted to be sitting in the same room with. 

Reece stared at the closed door nervously, on the other side of which he heard the nurse chat incessantly to someone. He kept his gaze averted, knowing better, but still couldn’t help sneaking a peek out of the corner of his eye.

“Whad’ya in here for, kid?”

Reece swallowed, though his throat was so dry he felt like he was swallowing sand. “Uh… nothing,” he rasped. “Just tripped and fell.” And  _wow,_ that was the most idiotic response he could have come up with. He noticed the senior looking at his backpack, which was about to spill open and reveal all his books, and Reece quickly gathered it all up and zipped it. Eyes met his own again, too curious for Reece’s comfort. 

And then those eyes looked  _directly_ at his leg, the injured one. 

_How the hell does he know?_ The senior had gotten here  _after_ Reece, so unless the nurse had told him…

Reece scooted off the cot and held his backpack close, barely suppressing the cringe as he put weight on his now wrapped foot. It wasn’t the best move showing weakness where seniors were likely to pick up on it, especially  _this_ senior. 

Eyes followed him but luckily no other movement. Reece let out a breath when he managed to get his hand on the door handle, but the next words sent chills of warning through him, just like when the senior had stepped into the small clinic and took a seat opposite Reece, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be than just sitting there and staring at him, trying to figure something out about Reece or rather, pinpointing his weaknesses.

“Do me a favor, kid, and put some salt on that burn. Clean it out good. It’ll sting, sure, but it’ll heal better that way.” Reece turned to stare at him incredulously.  _Rubbing salt, in an open wound? Yeah, ‘cause that’s the_ best _course of action and_ first  _on my list._ The senior hurried on, rambling in what  _seemed_ like seriousness to Reece, like he was  _trying_ to help, and then he realized without putting too much emphasis on it that he had never heard Wax say more than half a sentence before.  _Is he high? Why does he even care?_ “If it still hurts by tomorrow, then come find me. I might just have a remedy that’ll rock your world.”

_No, thank you,_ Reece thought but didn’t dare say.  _This has already been the strangest day ever and I’d like to get back to normal right about now_ . 

He was careful not to let the door hit him on the way out.

* * *

Reece was desperate by day’s end, or rather, by the early hours of the morning. The sharp ache in his foot - alternating between hot and cold - had only increased until it became a steady burn that radiated up into his leg, as far up as mid-thigh. The burn had been bearable at first as long as Reece wasn’t putting much weight on it, but the pain had increased bit by bit from there.

Now it was a raging hot inferno that meant Reece couldn’t think, couldn’t sleep, could barely even breathe without feeling like he was going to implode.

He didn’t know how he managed it, couldn’t comprehend how he remembered that the senior was three houses down, or how he remembered through the blinding agony and molten chaos in his head that his name was Wax. He would never recall dragging himself - barely upright at all - across two lawns before a door he hoped was the right one came into view.

And how the hell Reece had gotten upstairs, into Wax’s bedroom, he  _really_ didn’t want to know. 

But that was where he was now, sweat-soaked and throbbing all over and quite possibly dying, on the verge of sobbing hysterically and trying not to clutch his swollen ankle if only to make it worse, even though it looked mostly _fine_ externally. 

And all his savior could say to him was, “Jesus Christ. You sure don’t do anything halfway, do ya?”

_Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!_

“So you remembered where I lived, huh?”

Reece somehow pushed past the basest of his instincts in order to string an intelligible sentence together. “You extended the invitation, don’t revoke it now,” he swore through clenched teeth, more pissed off than preparing himself to beg. Wax had shown an interest in his predicament in the nurse’s office, which already seemed like ages before rather than mere hours, and Reece hoped to hell it hadn’t just been some joke, or worse, a warped figment of his imagination. Not that he’d ever conjure up a conversation with Charlie Wax, of all people.

“Whoa, hold your horses there, kid.” Wax shoved a pillow under Reece’s head, given he had all but collapsed on Wax’s floor. Not that a pillow really made any difference. “I ain’t revoking nothin’, just impressed is all. Impressed at how goddamn  _stupid_ you are.” 

Reece glowered as well as he could with his face contorted in agony, though he probably couldn’t do much more than look pathetic given the current state he was in.

Wax dug Reece’s fingernails out of his palms, for  _both_ hands, and it helped Reece tremendously enough that he released a breath and sunk further down into the carpet. Satisfied that Reece was more aware than he had been seconds previously, Wax next rolled up Reece’s khakis even more than they had been. “Did you put salt in it like I told you to?”

Shame instantly washed over Reece. “No,” he bit out stubbornly. “Honestly,” he tried to explain himself, “how the hell is  _salt_ going to do anything?”

“Never mind,” the senior snapped. “It was only meant to ease the symptoms, not solve the problem.”

Reece bit down on his lip, cringing at the saltiness of his blood, and watched through a haze of hot tears and sweat dripping into his eyes as Wax’s fingers continued to palpitate his foot and then climb slowly up his leg. “Can you fix it?” It sounded more like a plea than a question as soon as it was out, and Reece decided to blame it on the pain that even now was increasing.

Wax’s attention shifted instantly, flicking up to Reece. “Yeah. Yeah, I can fix it. It’s a good thing you came to me while you could still walk.”  _Yeah right._ “And it’s a damn good thing you were out on the bleachers yesterday.”

Reece exhaled loudly, panting, and then he remembered what Wax had finished with. “Wait… what?”

Wax didn’t meet his eyes again. Reece could have imagined it but his touch seemed to lighten, maybe now that he had figured out where Reece was most in agony. “I need to get to work.”

“Yeah.”  _That sounds like a good course of action right about now._

“Lay back and  _don’t_ think about anything. Don’t move either. Just…”

Whatever he was going to warn Reece against, it was soon drowned out in a wave of ear-splitting pain and terror and then a darkness that was even more unwelcome than the first two.

* * *

Saturday was a  _blur,_ to be lenient on himself.

Reece’s savior graciously let him remain on his floor, insisting that to walk on his foot now would be tantamount to suicide. And not even seniors who had reputations to uphold could get in the way of that. At least he had lain down some blankets and pillows in an attempt to keep Reece comfortable, which he was, for the most part, as long as he didn’t have to move.

Every time Reece opened his eyes or even drifted back toward consciousness but couldn’t quite manage the former, Wax was turning the pages of the comics he liked to read, or listening to the radio as it spewed out another Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin song. It was… comforting somehow, just the cooling feel of the fan as it whirred softly above him and the slight crackle of another page turning and the soothing lull of the radio. Reece would drift off easily, barely feeling his foot or his ankle or his leg or anything at all anymore.

The first period of true lucidity was punctuated by an all too familiar, grinning figure peering down at him. Reece blinked, hand swiping self-consciously over his face to be rid of hours old sweat, trying to clear his head of its recent cobwebs.

“Rise and shine, kiddo.” His voice was far too jovial for this early in the morning. “Unless you want to waste the whole weekend away.”  _And maybe that’s just my cue to get out._ Wax didn’t respond to his half-hearted glare, just sat on the floor beside him. “Don’t think we’ve had proper introductions, you and I. I’m Wax. Charlie Wax.”

“I  _know_ .” Obviously. Everyone in the school knew who Charlie Wax was, he hardly needed an introduction. 

Wax looked as pleased as a kid in a candy store, or maybe a comic book shop. “Ah, my reputation precedes me then.”

Reece rolled his eyes and sat up,  _very_ gingerly, amazed at how much better his ankle felt and how clear his head was. He reasoned he’d be able to get back to normal fairly quickly, if he  _could_ get back to normal after all this. Whatever all this had been. “Of course it does.” He decided to just get it over with. “And thanks, by the way. I think you probably saved my life.”

Wax scooted backward and pressed himself up against the nearest wall, giving Reece even more space. Reece was still leaning heavily against his own patch of wall and honestly, that was a  _huge_ accomplishment in and of itself. “Sure as  _hell_ saved your life, kiddo.”

Wax was  _really_ starting to rub him the wrong way. “Why do you keep calling me kid anyway? You’re only, what, three years older than I am?”

Wax tsked. “‘Cause you’ve got a whole lot to learn. Reading books that ain’t got no place in that head of yours.” Reece ran a hand through his hair, discreetly shielding his head for a few seconds. “Ticking time bomb is what it is,” Wax  _helpfully_ explained. “And you ain’t got no clue what’s out there either, not like I do.”

Wow, Wax  _definitely_ seemed like he had a screw loose. “What are you  _talking_ about?”

The senior reached up and pulled a book carelessly off his bookshelf, throwing it down in front of Reece, who recognized it immediately. It was a different cover than his own and a bit more beat up, but the gruesome image staring up at him sold it even better than the title could.  _Frankenstein._ He had just finished the novel several nights prior…

“Look outside, idiot,” Wax cursed.

And Reece didn’t want to but damn him, he had  _always_ been too curious for his own good. 

It took him several moments to move from the foreground of the window to the background, steeling himself, but once he did he recoiled in fear and disgust. The man standing just outside, clothed in a tattered and filthy gray cloak, staring directly at them, at  _him_ , didn’t  _look_ like a man. The closer Reece looked the more he wished he never saw. The figure looked like half a dozen men peering curiously back at him: eyes too large for his face, a sneering mouth that was barely a mouth at all, his facial features so ill-proportioned it was brutally apparent he wasn’t human. The face was gruesomely stitched, varying skin colors illuminating the existence of different patches of skin, chunks taken out of the scalp and a pockmarked chin and neck. 

Reece grasped the carpet underneath him with pale, trembling fingers and held onto the short threads for dear life.

_I’m dreaming. There is no other explanation for this. Mom said I always had an overactive imagination, even if I don’t, even if I don’t…_

“He won’t hurt you,” Wax offered. Reece hated the slight logic to that; the gruesome figure didn’t appear as if he was going to break down the only barrier between him…  _it_ and Reece. 

Still, Reece would have lunged at him if not for the fact that he was concerned about aggravating his very  _recent_ leg injury. “What the hell are you talking about?” He spat, needing to throttle something with all the pent up frustration and anger inside him. “My entire  _leg_ almost had to be amputated!” If he hadn’t remembered Wax’s offer, he could very well be  _dead_ right now. 

Wax shrugged as if Reece was over-exaggerating, as if all this was just another day for him, like a harmless intruder during a walk in the park. Who the hell was he anyway, really? Was  _he_ even human? “That was just a nasty side effect of the creature who’s taken on good ol’ Frankenstein’s form. Frankenstein never  _killed_ his master, you remember, he just killed everyone he loved. And besides, that creature out there would do no good killing you since all it’d be doing would be damning itself.”

Reece could feel himself shaking all over now, pressed up tightly against the wall and already starting to sweat again, pulse thrumming uncomfortably beneath his skin, ankle throbbing mercilessly again, hands slipping on the thin tether to his sanity. Wax stood up quickly, drew the curtains across the window and sat back down across from Reece. The room was plunged in darkness but already Reece felt a bit better. “I don’t understand what’s going on,” he murmured.

Wax, finally having taken pity on him, explained. “That thing out there’s a jinn, it preys on your daydreams.” Wax held up the book again but Reece couldn’t bear to take a second look. “Reading a bit too much Shelley lately?” He shoved it back onto the shelf. “ And don’t even think about picking up Stevenson, not until this is taken care of,  _then_ you can read to your heart’s content.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Wax cautioned. “I ain’t saving you from a shape-shifting deviant hell-bent on inane slaughter, vivisection, cannibalism and beating innocents within an inch of their lives. That’s a little  _too_ macabre for my tastes.”

Reece panted and practically whimpered in anxiety, pushing the books as far away from him as he was able, unsure whether he’d ever be able to pick up one of them again. “Not that.” Reece licked his lips, fighting for clarity and composure, “I still don’t…”

“Do I  _really_ have to spell it all out for you?” He pointed at the window and Reece was terrified that he’d actually draw the curtains back again. Then again, it didn’t much matter because Reece would have to leave Wax’s room, Wax’s  _house_ sometime; he couldn’t stay here in fear for the rest of his life. “It’s surviving off your imagination, on those creepy ass books you’ve been filling your head with. It’s feeding on you that way and you’re the only thing keeping it alive.”

Slivers of ice formed in his chest and spread to his arms and even plummeted to the very tips of his toes. “Feeding on me?”

And how the hell was Wax so nonchalant about all of this, about  _any_ of it? “On your imagination, anyway. Truth be told, this variation’s pretty harmless, some honest to god feed off blood or some psychological shit in your brain, making you go insane, or even organs and believe me, you don’t want to hear anymore about that last one. For some reason this jinn’s latched onto you. Possibly because you’re willingly feeding it without even realizing it, which means there’s no need to inflict you with any physical or psychological damage.”  _Yeah, except for my leg._ “Possibly because you’re not quite human.”

“Wait a second…”

“You get premonitions, don’t you? Images you can’t explain, probably just recently?”Wax peered at him closely as if waiting for Reece to make one wrong move, betraying one twitch or one dash of fear too much.

If sixteen months could be described as  _just recently._ “How did you…?”

“I’m perceptive,” Wax deadpanned. “Look, jinns, at least in the ancient translations, usually latch onto soothsayers.”

Reece knew he had come across that term before, considering he took to ancient history rather well and found more interest in the subject than most. “Soothsayers?”

Wax started flipping through an old, hardbound textbook that looked about as battered as Reece felt. He tried to get Reece to look at a page but he refused; there was only so much of this he could take before he  _really_ wouldn’t be able to walk out of here, at least in a mental sense. “Oracles, seers, psychics, they all add up to the same thing. Granted, you apparently didn’t  _know_ you were a psychic and that jinn out there’s just been trying to get your attention. Normally they feed off visions, or at least in the way that their life becomes twined around them, on you receiving them and jinns delivering them, but since you’re so keen on distracting yourself with books, it’s feeding off those instead, specifically your fascination and preoccupation with them.”

Well, not  _anymore._ He was going to have to try to get by on Spark Notes for a while and he wasn’t even sure if  _that_ would save him. 

And then a wild thought occurred to him: what were you supposed to do to monsters? What was the conclusion that each and every protagonist came to, or at least, most of them? Killing the monster. Killing the monster before it killed them or the ones they loved. Wax had to be here for that, right? He couldn’t just be here to dangle all this horrifying knowledge in front of Reece and then leave him to fend for himself. What would be the  _point_ of that? 

“Psychics are a rare breed, you know,” Wax informed him like Reece was supposed to feel flattered or grateful or even just a little bit better. If anything, he felt  _worse._

“Look, can you just get rid of it for me?”

Wax stared at him like he was some spoiled prep boy who got by on his looks alone and didn’t lift a finger to accomplish anything. Reece didn’t really know how to respond to that until he realized that Wax was trying not to show how amused he was. Then finally, when he almost couldn’t take anymore, Wax relented. “‘Course I can, kiddo. Why the hell else ya think I’m here? It’ll just… take a little finagling. Like I said, not all jinns are the same, so not all can be killed the same way.”

Reece started chewing on his fingernails, but at least he wasn’t digging holes into the carpet anymore. “Great, just great.”

Wax leaned forward and patted his knee, which Reece found almost intolerably awkward and uncomfortable. He kept his gaze down, on the patch of bare skin Wax had just touched, kept his mouth firmly closed, swearing to himself that he would  _not_ start vomiting or screaming. Wax offered him a hand up, along with a look of sympathy. “Leave it to me, alright? Not that I don’t think you could handle yourself, just that jinns can be tricky, messy even, to deal with.”

“Let me know if I can do anything?”

But, of course, he couldn’t really be expected to  _mean_ it.

* * *

He did, however, suppose he showed up when it mattered most.

The mask-wearing, knife-wielding figure, or jinn, or monster just to keep things simple seemed hell-bent on stabbing Wax by whatever means necessary, thrusting wildly at his head and then at his heart and even at both of his legs, trying to injure him enough to pin him down.

Wax was tiring, that much was fearfully apparent, panting and on the verge of sluggishness and yet still swinging wildly, blocking every one of the Phantom’s attempts to disarm or maim him, but not for long.

Reece, weaponless and defenseless, tried to think of a way in, a way other than distracting the jinn, which he didn’t think would work well enough.

Then, without warning, Wax managed to dash around his enemy, forcing him to trip somewhat over his own cloak, and daringly knocked the mask right off his face, a simple though genius backhand.

_Of course,_ Reece breathed after the mask was ripped away, lying discarded on rain-soaked blacktop. He glanced up to find a face equal parts horrifying and hideous: heavily scarred, skin stretched gruesomely over receding facial features, resembling a withered corpse more than a human. It was none other than the elusive, often invisible Opera Ghost, the Phantom himself. 

And a representation that would have made Leroux himself proud.

Why would the jinn choose to appear like these creatures, these characters who were half-monster and half-human? Why would it wear their skins and embody their souls? Was it because Reece loved these novels,  _devoured_ them, found a humanity and a distraction in them that took away from the unfamiliar horrors of his own visions?

Wax had told him he wasn’t human and that was why the jinn was drawn to him.

Was he just as damned?

It didn’t matter, not now anyway, not when Wax was fighting for his life mere feet away and Reece had the means to help him, maybe even save him.

Waiting for the right moment to jump in, Reece went through all the plots of all the horror classics he had read, trying to pinpoint the weaknesses of the protagonists and of the demons who either inhabited them, were created by them or challenged them. There was  _one_ underlying weakness, one which he didn’t believe he could completely fulfill but maybe just a portion of it…

Wax landed a blow on the Phantom’s arm, sending his knife flying, and  _that_ was the right moment. 

Reece ran towards the weapon and threw himself down on the ground without thought, landing oddly on his arm but reaching the knife seconds before the Phantom. Still on the ground, he threw himself forward the moment he realized it was going for Wax anyway, managing to stab it in the leg to knock it off balance, distracting it from Wax at least momentarily.

He didn’t see or even hear what happened next. Something hard collided with his head and left him tilting precariously on the edge of consciousness, probably a swift kick to the head that smashed his thoughts into mush and forced his vision to ripple sickeningly and then fade out, like a screen dissolving into static and then into total, mind-numbing darkness.

Reece couldn’t pinpoint how much time passed after the blackout.

At one point, he was resting face down on a cold, slimy surface and the next he was pushing himself up, stopping halfway to pull in a ragged breath and to wait for his vision to stop swimming and settle down, figuring he’d be of more use to Wax if he could see  _and_ keep his balance. 

But when Reece turned his head, arm scraped bloody and ankle throbbing a weak, unsteady beat, neither the jinn nor Wax were anywhere to be found.

* * *

Reece wondered where Wax was and how he was faring on the long walk home. He was tempted several times to turn around and try to find him, but he wasn’t a tracker like Wax was, wasn’t equipped to hunt like Wax was, and what had happened earlier had just been blind dumb luck.

He had no place in Wax’s world, not really; he had just been thrown into the middle of it, no doubt one of many fools Wax had saved over the years.

Not to mention, he was pretty sure he was being followed.

“Hey, kiddo!”

“Wax?” Reece whispered as loudly as he dared, watching in amazement - though also annoyance - as Wax jumped down several feet from a garden wall directly to his right. As Wax made his way over to him, Reece peered around as if whatever was following him would choose this exact moment to jump out at them. While Wax was only human; however, Reece had come to realize these past few days that he’d never chance going against him. Wax was too formidable and knowledgeable and, dare he say it, too damn bad ass for his own good.

Of course, he couldn’t get  _anything_ past the guy. “Relax, Reese cup,  _I’ve_ been following ya, alright?”

Reece released a sigh he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, tension draining from his overtaxed body and leaving him practically weightless. He’d never admit it to Wax but he felt  _safe_ around him, like maybe the world wasn’t just all this darkness and all these things lurking out in that darkness, like maybe Reece could get his head back up again and keep it there. “Jesus, Wax. You nearly gave me a heart-attack, you know that?”

Wax smirked and clapped him on the back and for once, Reece didn’t mind the senior manhandling him some. “You handled yourself pretty well back there.”

A spark of pride ignited in his chest, though it wasn’t long before he shyly stamped it out. At least he managed not to blush. He didn’t know when Wax’s opinions, when Wax’s  _assessment_ of him had started to matter, but it gave Reece just that little bit of power that he needed, that little bit of reassurance to keep him going. 

“Don’t get all humble on me, kid. Really, you did good.”

“Yeah, well, I figured you couldn’t save my ass  _every_ time.” Wax snorted, offering Reece a small smile. Eager to break whatever  _this_ was between them, Reece cleared his throat and pushed forward. “You took care of it then?” Wax nodded. “So what’s next? More hunting? Can’t believe there’s too much excitement here, it is a small town after all.”

Wax shrugged. “I may stick around or I may not. Never been too keen on school, but we’ll see where the mood takes me.”

Reece stared at him, aghast. “You don’t take anything seriously, do you?”

“I’m insulted!”

“Sure you are. Well, I’ll see you around then.” He turned, eager to get back home so he could pack all those horror classics away. Maybe he’d read some happy books, for once, or maybe he’d put reading altogether on hold for a year or two. And then, somehow, he realized that this wasn’t the right time to say goodbye to Wax, that he didn’t  _want_ to say goodbye to Charlie Wax. That maybe everything had been a sign and Reece had been a fool not to realize it, not to realize that he and Wax should be together, friends maybe, whatever. “Hey, Wax, that jinn  _should_ have been the only thing after me, ri…?” He turned back around but Wax was already gone, the sharp throb in his ankle lasting a mere three seconds the only reminder he’d been there at all, Reece both irritated and worried as he scanned the darkness. 

Reece had a feeling he’d been seeing Wax again though. Or, at least, he had the feeling that Wax would be keeping a close eye on him.

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

>  _Endnote:_ Gaston Leroux’s _Phantom of the Opera_ is one of my favorite novels ever; it’s truly a masterpiece of Gothic literature and is funny, charming and terrifying. O.G., in the reference to O.G.’s world, stands for Opera Ghost. Also, Robert Louis Stevenson’s _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde_ is another great Gothic piece, but it may just be the most terrifying thing I’ve ever read and largely because the reader can only guess what exactly Hyde indulges in on his nightly forays, so the examples I provided are mere guesses. And Mary Shelley’s _Frankenstein_ is definitely my favorite novel.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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